The objective of the exhibition “Psycho Buildings: Artists take on architecture”, hosted in London’s Hayward Gallery from May to August this year, was to awaken public disquiet and wonder.
The exhibition’s location was not selected at random. Since its opening in the 1960s as one of English architecture’s signature buildings, the gallery has been associated with the works of a number of practitioners of the visual arts, and has become an expression of its personal interpretation of the relationships, which people establish with the objects and environments that surround them.
This is similar to the approach adopted by the 10 artists who participated in the Psycho Buildings exhibition; they transformed the interior of the Hayward using photographs and installations, creating architectural and sensory environments, breaking a lot of rules in the process, and creating works that were impossible to ignore.
Artists invited to contribute to this exhibition included a Slovenian, a Korean, a Cuban, a Brazilian, an Argentine, a German, a Japanese, an Austrian and of course, an artist from the United Kingdom. They all contributed the very best of their technical and creative powers to astound the visiting public.
For example the Argentine Tomás Saraceno, contributed a huge, transparent, iridescent plastic bubble, which was placed on the facade of the gallery, so that passersby could not ignore it, while visitors were invited to go inside it and enjoy the view of the sky from its interior. They could do this either by looking directly upwards, or by looking down and observing the intense blue of the sky reflected in a mirror. This exhibit was called Observatory.
Another element that caught the attention of London’s art lovers was the work of the Austrian artist Gelitin, who erected an enormous pool on one of the gallery’s balconies, on which floated individual sized boats from which it was possible to see the shapes of the city’s tallest buildings. Visitors were therefore transformed into an additional element of the installation, as they themselves became the sailors who embarked on the boats.
However, not all the exhibits were as peaceful and relaxing as those contributed by Gelitin and Saraceno. Other, more challenging works left visitors with a sense of having been assaulted by their experience. Such was the case with Fallen Star 1/5, created by South Korean Do Ho Suh, in which the artist demonstrated how the Asian home of his childhood collided with his first home in the United States. On one level he was able to demonstrate the cultural shock he must have experienced as an immigrant, while the connoisseur was also able to discern the enormous contrast between the permeability of Korean architecture on the one hand and the opaqueness of Western architecture on the other.
And the violence expressed by an Oriental artist on being transplanted from eastern to western culture was also reflected in the work of Los Carpinteros, a group from Cuba, whose work reflected aggression experienced either by the hand of man or under the influence of nature.
This installation by artists Dagoberto Rodríguez, Marcos Castillo and Alexandre Arrechea created an environment that flew through the air, as if under the influence of a sharp impact. The impact resulted in floating fragments of wall, holes in the partitions and destruction on every side. The work by the UK artist Mike Nelson followed a similar path in his creation called “To the memory of H.P. Lovecraft”, which took the form of an empty room with holes hacked in it, indicating the marks of an invisible beast searching desperately for a way out.
Equally impressive were the works of Rachel Whiteread, who placed objects as innocent as dolls houses in the darkness and isolation of a ghost town, or of the German artist Michael Beutler, who created a maze out of wire and colored paper that transmitted all kinds of different sensations to visitors who made their way through it.
Today, Psycho Buildings is a thing of the past, as was its intention to mark the Hayward Gallery’s 40th anniversary together with the tribute that German artist Martin Kippenberger, known for the disturbing nature of some of his works, paid in giving the title of one of his own books to the exhibition itself. However, the effect that the exhibition had on those who visited it is definitely not a thing of the past. Thanks to the works of the invited artists, they enjoyed a mental, conceptual and physical experience of the exhibits which not only gave them aesthetic pleasure, but also generated an intellectual and emotional reaction. And after all, isn’t this the aim of all works of art?.
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